Though the Phillies, at long last, reached .500 for the first time since June 7, one would think most signs point to the team being sellers at the deadline. Yesterday, they lost center fielder Ben Revere to a broken foot and he will be sidelined for six to eight weeks. They have a few soon-to-be free agents. The Minor League system is still a little light on legitimate talent. They also rank among the bottom-ten in baseball in run differential at -45.

On the subject of improving the roster, GM Ruben Amaro asked rhetorically, “How do I do it? I don’t know. We’ll find out. I’m the GM. I’m supposed to be able to do this stuff I guess.”

Amaro told the media prior to this afternoon’s first-half finale that he is looking for upgrades in center field and in the bullpen. He said, “we’ll probably be looking for a centerfielder if there’s one that’s available. I don’t know if there’s one available or one that will be an upgrade from what we have right now with John [Mayberry] being out there.”

As it turned out, Mayberry helped the Phillies walk off in today’s first-half finale against the White Sox with an RBI single up the middle in the tenth inning. It was the third extra inning game the two teams had played in a 36-hour period. (Per Jayson Stark, it’s the first time all three games of a series went extras since the Athletics and White Sox did it May 11-13, 2011.) The Phillies emerged victorious in two of them and finish the ten-game homestand — which Amaro explicitly was using as a barometer for the team’s buyer or seller status — at 7-3. The Braves lost to the Reds, so the Phillies will enter the first half six games behind in third place.